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“No, no, no, no, no,” Danny mumbled as he reached sleepily for his phone, wanting nothing more than to stop Macho Man blaring from the tiny speaker. God, it wasn’t even properly light yet. He glanced at the screen; the picture that Danny himself had snapped of Steve peering curiously at the Barbie Doll inexplicably clutched in his hand, slowly swam into focus. Danny took a breath and pressed the green button.
“You promised me - you promised me that you would only call this early if it involved fire, famine, flood or Extra Terrestrial invasions. Which is it; is it the aliens? Have they come to take you home?”
“Dan - ”
‘Dan’? Steve never called him ‘Dan’. ‘Danny’, sure, all the time. ‘Danno’, yes, god help him. Even ‘Daniel’ once or twice in retaliation for the odd ‘Steven’ Danny dropped on him. Oh, and one memorable occasion when Steve had called him ‘D-Will’ for an entire day just to piss him off; but not ‘Dan’.
“Danny?”
That was more like it. Danny’s brain chose that moment to kick start and point out that something was Very Wrong. Steve’s breath was heavy down the line and it had taken him two attempts to get through Danny’s name. Damn it.
“You okay, babe?” Danny asked, suddenly alert.
“Fuckers tasered me.”
“We’re not talking about aliens here, are we? Who tasered you – wait, no, shut up – where are you?”
“Home.”
“Home? I’m coming over right now,” Danny was already out of bed and hunting down a shirt. “Any other injuries I should know about?”
“Danno - ”
“Don’t ‘Danno’ me, injuries - yes or no?” Danny pinched the bridge of his nose as he waited for the answer.
“No. Um, couple of bruises. Nothing else, I swear.”
“Are you sure? Because if I get over there and find you bloody and broken and in need of medical attention and I didn’t call for the EMTs, I am going to be so cranky with you -”
“M’fine, Danny.”
“Fine? Oh, you’re fine? Well, tell me this Lieutenant Commander Fucking-Fine, if you’re so fine why are you calling me at the ass crack of dawn, huh?”
“’Cause they tasered me. Th’hurts, man.”
“Yes, Aquaman, because they tasered you!” Danny shouted. “And now you’re hurting. Fuck it, I’m on my way.”
Danny hung up the phone and pulled on his pants.
~oxo~
“Steve?” Danny called as he let himself in through the front door. “Steven? Ah, there you are.”
“That was fast,” Steve said, not moving from his slouch against the wall. “You must have driven like-”
“Don’t start with me,” Danny cut him off as he stepped over Steve’s ungainly sprawled legs and crouched in front of him. He grasped Steve’s chin lightly, his fingers tilting it slightly so he could check his eyes. “Roads were quiet, that’s all.”
“Sure they were,” Steve agreed with a small grin. He tried to bat Danny’s hands away from making a fuss.
“Don’t give me that face – and stop it, you called me, remember? Now you have to put up with the fact that I’m here. All our actions have consequences, my friend; your phone call means I’m here and that I’m going to check your – whoa, what the hell is this? Is this bruising from the taser points?”
“Probably.” Steve winced when Danny ran his thumb over the tender spot on his neck.
“Tasers shouldn’t leave marks like this,” Danny argued, pulling Steve’s tee shirt away from his skin so that he could get a better look.
“No, and the standard Police and Military issue X26s don’t. I don’t think this one was standard issue, somehow. Couple of seconds and I was out cold – hell less than, he barely touched me and I was gone. My legs are still...Box!”
“Your legs are still box? What does that even mean?”
“No. Box. The toolbox – that’s what they were after.”
“Your Dad’s toolbox?” Danny asked, straightening up and already heading in the direction of Jack McGarrett’s old desk.
“Fuck. Yes.” Steve leaned over, one elbow pressed to the floorboards watching Danny as he scoured the rooms. “It’s gone, Danno. They had their hands on it when I interrupted them. They knew exactly what they were after.”
Danny sighed and wiped a hand over his face. Steve was right, whoever these fuckers were, they had intended to get in and out without being noticed. It was the only reason Steve was still alive right now instead of lying on the floor with a bullet through his head. Awfully noisy business, shooting someone. “Yeah, you’re right,” Danny admitted and went back to where Steve was still sprawled across the floor. “You wanna get up now?”
“Gimme a minute and I should be able to get my legs under me,” Steve said wearily.
“Yeah, okay,” Danny agreed, crouching back down next to him. He slid his fingers under the neck of Steve’s tee, ostensibly to check the marks left by the taser, but when his thumb brushed against Steve’s neck and his fingers smoothed over his skin, Steve leaned silently into his touch. “They could have killed you, you know?” Danny pointed out quietly.
“They didn’t.” Steve shrugged. “Too noisy, I guess.”
“Same conclusion,” Danny said, pointing at himself. “You couldn’t have just stayed in bed and let them take whatever the fuck they wanted without endangering your own life?” Danny asked with a sigh. “No, of course you couldn’t. What am I thinking?”
“Would you have stayed put?” Steve asked pointedly. His hand crept up and wrapped around Danny’s wrist where it rested so close to his face. Danny immediately went to remove his hand but Steve gave a quick shake of his head and kept Danny’s wrist in position. Danny let his fingers curl back over Steve’s shoulder, mapping the warmth of his skin.
“We’re not talking about me,” Danny argued weakly as Steve’s thumb began tracing small circles into the sensitive skin over his pulse.
Steve gave a small huffing laugh and hitched a half smile onto his face.
“I swear to god,” Danny moaned, wrapping his other hand around the back of Steve’s neck, pulling him in to rest their foreheads together. “You need a full time SEAL-sitter.”
“Yeah? You want the job?” Steve asked.
Danny snorted. Silence hung heavy with potential between them for a very long moment.
“Sure,” Danny said – and fucking hell, he felt like he was either going to retch or go into cardiac arrest. “Yeah, babe, I want it.”
Steve looked at him with such longing that Danny was about to lean in and make good on his acceptance when Steve dropped his grip on Danny’s wrist and turned his head away, employing his Game Face.
“What’s that about?” Danny asked, pulling back and waving a hand in Steve’s face. “Hey? What the hell? We were having a moment here, were we not? Why the Aneurism Face?”
“I need to get dressed.” Steve started to move getting to his feet with a little less grace that he usually displayed.
“Hey. Hey! I asked you a question, Gigantor – what’s with you all of a sudden?”
“I – nothing – I need to put some clothes on.”
Danny watched him stumble away up the stairs. What the ever-loving fuck? They’d been dancing around this thing between them for months. Pushing each other every step, getting closer and closer and the moment things came to a head, Steve bolted. Damn it. Damn him.
Danny sighed and stood up, his knee aching like a bitch and his heart still hammering in his chest. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called Chin; time to bring in the cavalry.
~oxo~
Slipping the phone back into his pocket, Danny peered up the stairs; watching the empty space like he was waiting for something exciting to happen – some interpretive performance art, perhaps? A firework display? A visitation from the spirit of Babe Ruth? He glanced back down at the floor where Steve had been sitting and then straightened his back and stomped up the stairs.
“You know what? Screw this,” he announced as he pushed through Steve’s bedroom door.
“Don’t you ever knock?”
As Steve spun round to glare at him, Danny noted the genuine annoyance in his eyes. Good. “M’gonna knock on your head in a minute.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Detective.”
“Oh, oh no, don’t come the death glare with me, princess. It won’t work, I promise you. You might be a total bad-ass, you might even be a total bad-ass when you’re barefoot and half dressed – which is a good look for you by the way – but you don’t intimidate me.”
“Oh, I don’t?” Steve asked. He threw the shirt he was still holding behind him and onto the bed and then stepped right up to Danny.
“That’s right, get in close, McGarrett , let’s see what you’ve – jeezus fuck, they really did a number on you,” Danny finished quietly, reaching out to run his fingers lightly over a bruise that had blackened across Steve’s ribs.
“I take it back – they were trying to kill you. Look at you...” Danny’s hand found another bruise low on Steve’s abdomen and he didn’t bother to hide his concern or his fear as he traced the shape of it. “When we find the guys that did this, I’m going to stamp on them.”
He meant it. He absolutely meant it. He felt a flush of anger and a niggling pain all of his own and he was just starting to think that this had been the worst idea of his life so far because he’d clearly lost all control of the situation when a hand closed over his and squeezed tight.
“It’s all right, Danno. M’fine. They’re just bruises, they’ll heal soon enough.”
“Yeah,” Danny said quietly. He tilted his head, looked right into Steve’s eyes. “That, right there? That’s why you don’t intimidate me.”
“I wasn’t trying to intimidate you,” Steve argued.
“Yes, you were. But I’ll let it go for now. There are issues there that we will be discussing in the future – no doubt about it - but for now you’re bruised and I’m tired and Chin and Kono are on the way so...”
“Yeah. So, I’d better finish getting dressed – if you’re done manipulating me to prove some non-existent point?”
Danny hadn’t failed to notice that Steve still had a hold of his hand. “Just one more thing,” he said quietly.
Steve nodded at him.
Carefully, Danny wrapped a hand around the back of Steve’s neck and pulled him down. He lifted his own head and pressed his mouth against Steve’s. For a second Steve was still and unresponsive, Danny had just enough time to start panicking before Steve’s arms were tight around his back, pulling him in. Steve’s lips moved across his and Danny’s mouth opened to encourage him and Steve did his level best to steal every last ounce of oxygen from Danny’s lungs.
“Mhngh,” Steve said when they finally surfaced for air. “Bad,” he added.
He kissed Danny again and Danny managed to get a hold of Steve’s hair with the intention of holding him there for-fucking-ever.
“Bad,” Steve said again, kissing him over and over with a helpless look on his face. “Bad, bad, very bad.”
“Stop saying ‘bad’,” Danny all but shouted before kissing back, harder this time.
“No, this can’t – mmmngh, Danny, this can’t happen - ”
“Au contraire, I believe it just did – and is about to again, right now.”
It did happen again. Twice.
“Au contraire?” Steve gasped.
“Shut up or I’ll - ”
Steve cut him off with another kiss. Bastard.
Steve pulled back with a frustrated and painful moan and managed to let go, shaking his head. “No, no, no. Bad. We can’t – we can’t -” With more self control than Danny could have found within himself, Steve managed to break away completely. He immediately turned his back and scrubbed a hand through his hair. When he turned around to face Danny once again he looked wrecked.
Danny bit down on the anger building inside him, genuinely terrified by how quickly it turned to an ache. Steve wasn’t bullshitting.
“We can’t do this – whoever these guys are at the top of this shit-pile, they killed my mother, they killed my dad – there’s too much going on for us to...”
Danny nodded. “You think it’ll make a difference?” he asked, trying so hard to keep it light. “I mean, I’m your partner, I’m a target anyway – that’s the implication here, isn’t it? That you’ll make me a target?”
Steve was about to answer when the roar of an engine sounded in the drive; the slam of doors and the shouts of their two errant team members was all it took for the space between them to become a wall.
“We’re not done with this,” Danny said as he walked to the door.
“We are,” Steve called after him.
“No,” Danny said, not turning back. “We’re not.”
He went down to the kitchen to make up an ice pack; no reason for Steve to be in pain when he didn’t have to be, right?
~oxo~
“You lost track of time?” Danny asked later that night, just the two of them left in HQ after the day from hell. Mary Ann was now safely back on the Mainland, Kono and Chin had gone for a well-earned beer before hitting the sack, and the Governor had finally hung up the phone and left them alone for the evening. “What were you doing? To lose track of so much time, I mean?”
“What?” Steve asked stupidly. But okay, whatever, he’d had a long day too.
“When I said I’d been calling you, you said you’d just lost track of time, so now I’m asking what was so fascinating that an Army man like yourself got so completely caught up?”
“Navy, asshole. I was out on the sand, man; just thinking.”
“Thinking?”
“Yup.”
“Okay. About what?”
“I told you we were done with this,” Steve said, shutting him down.
“And I told you we weren’t.” Danny shrugged, not even bothering with the pretence of misunderstanding. “Will you please stop looking at the damn pictures for a minute?”
“These pictures are important,” Steve snapped, not looking up from the table. “And Mary getting kidnapped just proved my point. I’m not endangering anyone any more than I already have.”
“Okay, so A - Mary is not a trained police officer. I can look after myself. Two, I am an adult - you don’t get to tell me what actions I can or can’t take and, finally; even if all this stuff you’re jostling about in that crazy brain of yours is bang on the money, who says you’re not worth the risk? Huh?”
Steve finally stopped flicking through the photographs. He didn’t look up though, he didn’t move at all. Just kept staring at the table, his knuckles getting whiter and whiter where they pressed hard to the surface.
“Come on,” Danny said quietly after a moment, gently gripping the nearest of Steve’s hands and pulling it away from the table. “Chin will actually kill us if we break another one of these; he still hasn’t really forgiven us for the baseball incident.”
Steve let Danny pull his hand away but then immediately shook him off and paced a few steps. He turned, took a few more, turned again before heading for the wall. He fell back against it, running his hands through his hair as his entire body seemed to curl in on himself in defeat.
Danny went in for the kill.
“There was a serious question in there, babe. What makes you think you’re not worth the risk?”
“I’m not,” Steve answered immediately.
Danny nodded, he caught his bottom lip in his teeth before letting it go with a quiet pop. “Okay, listen up now because I can’t be saying shit like this all the time but you are worth it. You’re worth it to me,” he said quietly.
“Danno - ”
Danny started moving towards Steve, his eyes drawn to those downturned lips.
“It’s too – I’m not - ” Steve tried to say.
“Shut up,” Danny told him.
“I’m serious, this could - ”
Danny cut him off again by walking right into his space, between his legs, pressing himself against every inch of Steve he could touch and kissing him so soundly that there was no option but to respond. Steve wasted no time in getting his arms around Danny and hauling him in closer. Danny managed to get his hand cupped against Steve’s face; his fingers running along the line of his jaw as his thumb grazed his cheekbone in a caress.
“You’re worth it to me, got it? Do I make myself clear? You understand me here?”
Steve nodded. Danny’s knees nearly buckled when Steve ran his lips across his jaw and nuzzled under his ear.
“Don’t get me wrong, I think you’re an idiot sometimes,” Danny moaned weakly. “But you mean a lot to me.”
Steve looked at him and Danny knew he was doomed; those goofy eyes would be the death of him.
“Ditto, Danno,” Steve grinned.
“’Ditto, Danno’? Did you just say – oh my god, you get no points for that. I practically poured my soul out in a heart-felt confession and you give me ‘Ditto, Danno’? No, seriously, that’s what you’re going with because I could – mmnphmph.”
“God, it’s unfair that you can do that to me,” Danny muttered when they broke apart.
“I like it,” Steve added with a grin, his hands sliding over Danny’s ass and holding him close.
“Of course you do.” He happily nipped kisses along Steve’s jaw and deepened them easily when he reached his mouth. “Gah, home. We need to go home. Now,” he said, trying not to encourage the way Steve was starting to move against him with intent. “Home. Home, right now; Chin will be very unhappy if he finds ass prints on his shiny tech table thingy when he comes in tomorrow. I’m serious.”
Steve looked over at the table, his eyes filled with the crazy kind of glee that told Danny he was seriously considering it.
“Nuh uh,” Danny shook his head. “Back to your place.” He ducked away from Steve’s grasp and went to open the door, holding it for Steve.
“Yeah,” Steve sighed, still looking at the table with a wistful smile. “We’ll save that one for another time. Home,” he agreed, grabbing Danny, kissing his neck and bundling him out of the door ahead of him.
.xx.